1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of delivery services, and more specifically, systems and methods for tracking delivery items.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mail delivery services routinely track mail to ensure its efficient processing. This tracking may be at various stages, levels or quantities within the mail processing system. For example, this tracking may involve individually mailed items, trays of mailed items or larger transportation containers. These transportation containers can include, for example, the General Purpose Mail Container (GPMC), the Eastern Region Mail Container (ERMC), the All Purpose Container (APC), and the like. One concept used in tracking is the idea of “nesting” mailed items, trays or containers to aggregates at various levels (i.e., letters-to-trays, trays-to containers, containers-to-transportation). This nesting strategy allows items to be grouped and tracked at a macro level, while still being able to track at the micro level. This simultaneous tracking at both the macro and micro levels is possible through the conventional concepts of inheritance, aggregation and association.
Initiatives used, for example, by the United States Postal Service (“USPS”) give customers, such as major mailers, the ability to track at the lowest aggregate level, i.e., individual mail piece. Other programs might track, for example, trays, bundles of trays (or flats), sacks, pallets or containers prepared by large mailers with the nesting information provided by mailers through electronic manifests. Additional programs might be capable of creating electronic manifests for containers at Terminal Handling Sites (“THS”) by scanning trays and sacks as they are loaded into air transportation containers.
As more key infrastructure components are put into place, such as having the ability to uniquely identify trays, flats and containers of mail via programs such as, for example, the Enhanced Tray Label and the Mail Transport Equipment Labeler programs, there is a growing need to expand the tracking and nesting of delivery items including the nesting of trays into transport containers (e.g., GPMC, ERMC, APC, etc.), transport containers into transportation vehicle (e.g., planes, vans, trucks, trains, ships, etc.), and so on.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved methods and systems for tracking the nesting of delivery items.